New study puts Spectrum among nation's top 10 health-care systems

Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health, currently in partnering talks with Traverse City's Munson Healthcare and an affiliate of Petoskey's Northern Michigan Regional Hospital, made ninth place among the nation's best health systems in the second annual study by Thomson Reuters of Ann Arbor.

The Thomson Reuters "100 Top Hospitals: Health System Benchmarks" analyzed 255 systems around the country with at least two short-term, general acute-care hospitals.

Here's an excerpt:

The winners of this award outperformed their peers — they provided better care, followed standards of care more closely, saved more lives, had fewer patient complications, made fewer patient safety errors, and had better overall patient satisfaction scores.

Although the winning health systems have excellence in quality and efficiency in common, they differ in many ways — including their ownership, religious affiliation, size, and the geographic distribution of their member hospitals. These health systems tend to be headquartered in the Midwest, similar to the concentration of the 100 Top Hospitals: National Benchmarks award winners. Highlighting the top-performing health systems is the first step in understanding what practices lead to better outcomes and more successful performance improvement.

To read the entire report, please click here.